Letitia Diergaardt is a receptionist for a battery-supplier in Windhoek, Namibia. One can almost picture her office: modest, a computer on her desk and hard copy accounting sheets, financial documents and debtors’ books neatly filed in cabinets. Diergaardt is also a director or owner of nine offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven where the true owners of companies register them to hide their identities from the prying eyes of the authorities in their home countries. But now, leaked documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonsesca have revealed her identity, and with it, give an insight...

June 16, 1976, 40 years ago today: a spark ignited by students on the dusty streets of Soweto set in motion a chain of events that would play a key role in the birth of a new democratic South Africa, 18 years later. That fatal day began with peaceful protests but soon escalated into bloodshed, as ill-prepared police opened fire with live ammunition on unarmed students protesting against the implementation of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in black schools. The youth-led wildfire of protests quickly spread across South Africa. With the death toll mounting, police and the army moved into townships where government and official property was put to the torch. But the first seeds were planted as far back as 1953, with the implementation of the hated Bantu Education Act that condemned black pupils to decades of inferior...

About the Data Journalism Academy

The Data Journalism Academy represents an initiative of Code for South Africa’s data literacy programme which is aimed at equipping participants with the skills and tools that enable them to access and explore public data.